Using "listening" as a pre-reading activity in the reading classes

ABSTRACT This study aimed to examine the effects of listening, in this case listening for specific information, as a pre-reading activity on reading comprehension. It was conducted with Turkish students of EFL enrolled in the preparatory program for the students at the Education Faculty and the Communication Sciences Faculty at Anadolu University. The participants were selected according to their level of proficiency. Two groups of students regarded at the upper-intermediate level of proficiency were selected as subjects. Prior to instruction, the Michigan Placement Test was administered to the two groups to determine their exact proficiency level. 15 students in each group proved to be at the upper-intermediate level. Although no interest survey was administered prior to the selection of the reading texts, texts regarded to be of interest to young adults were selected for the study. Both the reading texts and listening extracts were selected from course books especially designed for students at the upper-intermediate level. The topics included were: crime-burglary, fast food, sex discrimination, pain killers, working at home, and earthquakes. Six reading texts were used in the study. The listening extracts were on topics related to the reading texts. The reading texts were approximately at the same length, 350 to 450 words, and the listening extracts were at the same duration, 2 to 3 minutes. While in one group listening was used as a pre-reading activity, speaking was used in the other group. This was done in an interchangeable manner. In this way both groups (Group A and Group B) were used both as control and experimental groups (see Chapter 3.2). This means for six text applications each group was the experimental group for three texts and the control group for the other three texts. Subjects were given tests after each reading text exarmiting their comprehension of the reading text. The test components consisted of 5comprehension questions, 5 true/false statements, and 5 guessing vocabulary items. The results of the six texts were examined and analyzed statistically. The statistical results revealed that there was no difference between the groups in the comprehension of texts where listening for specific information was used and where a short class discussion was used in the pre-reading stage. However, a difference occurred within groups. While subjects in one group scored higher in tests given after texts where listening was used in the pre-reading stage, subjects in the other group scored higher in tests given after text where a short class discussion was used. Since there was no statistical difference on the effectiveness of one type of pre-reading activity on the other, it is concluded that, listening for specific information can also be used in the pre-reading stage as a substitution to speaking for building background knowledge.